It's astonishing that so many in this discussion are attempting to deny the basic law of supply and demand.

Obviously increasing the number of buyers when land is limited will increase the cost of housing as has occurred, with such disastrous consequences, for so many ordinary Australians in the previous three or so decades. Property speculators make little secret of this fact.

Indeed on an edition of Radio National's "Australia Talks Back" in May 2004 to discuss the woes of the property investment 'industry', whose expectations of endlessly escalating housing prices had, at the time, been brought to a temporary halt, an economist, representing property speculators repeatedly expressed his hope that the anticipated resumption of high immigration levels would start housing inflation once more.

This has since happened with immigration numbers being increased to unprecedented levels of over 140,000 per annum, which is twice the historical average and the still more disastrous results are there for everyone to see.

The link between immigration and housing inflation was irrefutably established in a submission by Sheila Newman, then Victorian branch President of Sustainable Population Australia (http://www.population.org.au) to the Victorian Government Housing Affordability Inquiry in 2003. It can be downloaded as a pdf file (size 1.58MB) from here :

http://www.candobetter.org/sheila/spaVicAffordableHousingEnquirySub153.pdf

Perhaps housing affordability has something to do with the mansions we now expect to live in? My guess is that if we used measures such as what people fifty years ago thought was adequate housing (I remember living in a small country town in an eight square weatherboard house with a fireplace as the only heating and with no hot water) then housing affordability would not be an issue

Oh dear. Hasbeen, the <humour> tags were there for the benefit of the humour-challenged of any gender.

I see that in your case, they were still not enough. When did you have your humourectomy? Hope you recover soon.

As for being a coward, I post under my real name and I stand by the comments I make. And I've had enough mud hurled my way, so I know what to expect on OLO.

And I honestly had no thoughts at all about how "women" would react, although I guess I had assumed they would react the same way as men - as individuals, not as a group - perhaps you think otherwise.

Regardless, I can see that humour is wasted on OLO, where everybody considers their opinions far too important to make light of. Oh well, I'll go back to being grim and dour since that's what counts for a "serious" opinion around here.

Its good to see everyone is an expert on the topic...

I shutter to think if some of you guys pulled the economic strings.....

Howard's owings to big business.

"Mr Howard said urban sprawl, which in many Australian capitals already exceeded more than 100km, may be a price the nation had to pay to solve the problem of unaffordable housing."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Sprawl-the-trade-for-cheap-housing-PM/2006/08/30/1156816942802.html

Comment:

The way he lies blatantly about his immigration funnel into SYDSEQ at the behest of a few financial barons is absolutely PHENOMENAL.

Has panic set in?

Howard couldn't lie straight in bed of a night. This isn't about Australian capitals. Its about Sydney and SE Qld. This isn't about young Australians househunting. Its about more migrants to fill shopping malls, tollways and media registrations..

Its about a debt Howard owes to property barons, infrastructure barons and Media Barons. Well, there are only three of them and 12 million people in NSW and SE Qld paying for Howard's price to them while he steals our GST, steals our right to quiet enjoyment, kicks us in the workplace and kicks us in our unis and colleges.

Its about an unsustainable migration program that Howard knows will fall flat if newby migrants are denied cheap access to the mono- supremo popular SYDSEQ. Popular because locals have been debased, overcrowded and biodiesel-meningococcolled and are considered worldwide as pushovers.

NSW and SEQ have had enough and we won't take any more!

STOP RELEASING LAND IN SYDNEY AND SEQ AND SHOW THIS PIMP WHOSE THE BOSS>

Then his 140,000 migrants per year (and their bloody cars) will have to go to the other capital cities. Big business will have to adapt. If they don't like adapting they can pull the plug on Howard and help us boot him out.

The more Howard bucks the will of the NSW people in particular with his propaganda and heinous migration tactics, the harder he is going to fall. Fall to the cheers of 8 million New South Welshman next election, November 2007.

Looks like Westfields might have spat the dummy!

Andrew

“As you know I support Australia having a higher population level than you do. I believe this level of population can be sustainable”

Yes I know…and it befuddles me completely.

At the risk of going over old ground….

It might be possible to have a larger population that is sustainable, but it currently looks highly unlikely. Why on earth wouldn’t we address the issue of continuous population growth (continuously increasing demand for all sorts of stressed and yet-to-be-stressed resources) with as much fervour as we are (or should be) addressing all the other stuff (alternative energy sources, better efficiencies, lowering per-person consumption, etc)? It is completely nonsensical to just let one huge aspect go unchecked, especially when it has the power to cancel out the gains made in all other areas put together. And why on earth would you want Australia to have a larger population anyway, especially one that is continually growing with no end in sight?

It just makes no sense at all. And it profoundly affects the way you think about all sorts of issues Andrew…. because with the acceptance of continuous growth you cannot possibly be striving for real sustainability, no matter what you may say or believe.

But you are not alone. I have made this point on numerous threads, pertaining to many well-meaning article-writers.

“If in doing so, serious constraints emerged as a direct consequence of the projected population level…”

Don’t you think serious constraints HAVE emerged? It makes me wonder what you mean by ‘serious’!

One serious symptom of population growth is the continuous rapid release of land, despite apparent rationing by many councils…. and the push for these councils to free up their approval process thus risking letting urban sprawl and population growth get out of whack with infrastructure and service provision, leading to a lower quality of life for the whole community.